Yes, any sort of distance... even in the experience of such calamities, I think, there is at first a kind of autonomic distancing, a strange moment in which our senses do the "thinking," before the sobering cognitive interpretation sets in.

I recall, that morning of the October '89 fire, stepping out the door into a curiously sultry atmosphere, watching a large plume of what looked like an equatorial storm cloud rise eerily through filtered sunlight, and for just that moment experiencing it as almost pleasant -- a feeling as though one had been transported to the tropics. Then in the next instant, on switches the mind, uh-oh. The hills are on fire.

We'd experienced something of the same sort a half dozen years earlier in Santa Barbara.

A uniquely Californian phenomenon, so common I'm always surprised people far away associate this crumbling state with golden dreams.

(...Well, I suppose the "crumbling" bit might come off as sounding a bit dyspeptic. I meant to imply not only the tinderbox aspect and atmosphere of imminent economic collapse, but also the equally uncertain state of Californian geology: put in mind of this yesterday by a moderate temblor on the fault atop which we sit: a sharp, shocking, and meaningful reminder.)